September 2014

Kenyan coffee is normally the bee's knees - so we snapped this one off the shelf on a recent trip to Morrisons - which itself seems to have gentrified since the last time this judge was in their aisles way back in the nineties in the dusty back streets of Bradford. Instead of being all pies and Yorkshire Puds it's now all artisan bread, wet misted veg and - well - Kenyan coffee. Bring it on.two packs for a fiver is the deal of the year too. Taste-wise the wasn't quite as good their Ethiopian offering - it just had a slightly metallic twang to it. Probably because we over cooked it - but then we'll never know as we won't be making a weaker version any time soon. Still - it's a great coffee - looks good with a nice head on it. It makes a great paring with the Ethiopian - buy them both. 7/10

This stuff looks simply amazing. We're only using a simple French press to make it yet it comes out, every time, with a thick creamy head as though it had been run through a five grand Gaggia in a carbon-neutral hipster coffee bar in Shoreditch. We've not had that much head since the Judges took a weeks sabbatical to the Reeperbahn. It's so easy to make this one - it comes out the same every time. It's got a slightly fruity twist to it which, when you have the first one, is a real pleasant surprise. But after a few cups this does end up tasting a little bit metallic. Maybe we just over spooned this one - it would probably benefit for being made just a little weaker. But we didn't do that. Its an 8/10

This is a weird looking one that comes from France. It has a bit of English on the side that says "Creamy Coffee Personified" which is quite literarily wrong, as creamy coffee it may be, it still is just a tin of coffee and not a person. Which is what I was lead to believe personified means. Once you get past the grammatical errors and into the tin, the first thing you'll notice is how finely ground this is - it's got the consistency of flour. Which means when you spoon it out it's very easy to overdo it - it will pile up on the spoon in a giant pyramid that is quite literally the Great Pyramid of Cheops personified. So you do need to keep tapping the spoon to bring it down to a more normal measure. The resulting brew is worth the fiddling though - it's a frothy, heavy number that is super chocolaty and satisfying. Like a Milo laced with amphetamines. Unusually for the French it comes in a handy tin rather than a nightmarish vacuumed packed brick which makes it very user friendly. We loved it. 9/10